Monday, June 15, 2009

Philosophical corner 82

Let me activate my students; here's an Assignment:
Define yourself with as few words as possible so that at any point in history and at any point in the universe one could single you out as an individual. No need for extra words, like, if you identify as "Swedish person" I will assume that "human lifeform" is included. Once you've boiled yourself down, look at it from a different angle. If you identified yourself from nationality and religion, for example, could you identify yourself in some other way like interests or internet nicknames or whatever. Is there more than one finite definition of "you"?

Assignment two, building on Assignment one:
What would you want on your gravestone? Would your family name be enough? Would you want your professional title or your home town added? Would you be satisfied if your spouse had his/her whole name but you were added to the stone as "his/her spouse *first name*"? Would you want a quote from the bible or otherwise? Would you want to be buried with anything?

1 comment:

Rik said...

I can't really answer question 1, it's too tricky.

Assignment 2, though - I have long ago decided that I want nothing but my name and some text. I can't quite decide *what* text that would be, though I have a million ideas.